Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) church

The church of Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross, belongs to the Passionists, a congregation of Irish origin in Argentina. The Passionists were invited in 1879 to serve the Irish, and Fr Fidelis Kent Stone, a Boston-born convert, arrived in 1881 and founded three retreats. Holy Cross became a centre of Irish Argentine life, the Buenos Aires Herald writer Michael Geraghty recorded in 2007. The Argentine foreign ministry's 2017 exhibition on Irish immigration includes a photograph of the first chapel, the "old tin chapel" of 1883. Geraghty places the church in Almagro; other sources give the address as Urquiza 925 in San Cristóbal.

In June 1977 families of the disappeared began meeting at Santa Cruz. On 8 December 1977 Mary Ponce de Bianco, Esther Ballestrino de Careaga and the French nun Alice Domon were among those abducted as they left the church. Azucena Villaflor was taken from her home two days later. Twelve people were taken in all, including founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and two French nuns. A naval officer had infiltrated the group under a false name, and the victims were taken to the ESMA. In 2005 the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identified the remains of five of the women. The officer was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011, and a 2017 ESMA verdict convicted death-flight pilots for the first time.